My Uncertainty Principle. Discovery: Climate Change shares a secret with Creative Thinking

Revised 10 November 2009, 0820 hours

MANILA - Eureka! 09 November 2009, morning of Monday, I just discovered the secret to teaching creative thinking as I was trying to discover the secret to teaching climate change. And the secret is The Uncertainty Principle. I'm certain of that.

Where did climate change by chance meet creative thinking this time? This story all began in Australia where the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) launched their Adaptation Initiative in 2007; in 2008, they came out with what they called the Local Government Climate Change Adaptation Toolkit (available for downloading as a pdf file if you click the link). I had been reading and trying to ruminate on the contents of this toolkit for the past few days. Actually, it's very helpful, very educational, and very clear. And I remember vaguely mentioned somewhere something about uncertainty applied as a matter of principle.

It has been days since I began searching for Web pages of "climate change" - I'm researching for a book. Sunday, Enya emailed asking me if I conducted writing seminars, and that moved me to search for "creative writing." In the middle of my search, having browsed through about 57 Web pages, the insight flashed that if you want to teach creative writing, you should not. You should, instead, teach creative thinking - writing is the last of your worries. So I changed my search to "creative thinking" looking for species with their entrails exposed for me to digest while cerebrating, and that's how I came across Lane Wallace's article in The Atlantic, "The Inefficiency of Creative Thinking," and, intrigued with the title, I read on. I enjoyed it immensely, as no doubt you can see from my clear excerpts, in italics, and my plain reaction that follows each of her quoted text (correspondents.theatlantic.com):

Young brains, according to UC Berkeley psychology professor Alison Gopnik, are "remarkably plastic and flexible … But they are less efficient." They wander in all sorts of connectional directions, imagine all kinds of possibilities, and are drawn particularly to objects and events that are "new, unexpected or informative." Things, in other words, that will teach them the most.

Personally, I know creative thinkers are like that: they have that child-like curiosity. And of course, I remember Bill Cosby pointing out, baby or not, you have to be careful; if you don't watch out, you might learn something. My advice: As a creative thinker, you should not be careful.

Adult brains, on the other hand, have been honed to ignore superfluous information and events - especially when given a particular goal to achieve. Gopnik references an experiment where adults, told to count the number of ball tosses in a video, don't even notice a person in a gorilla suit who walks through the scene. Like the way I walked through (Colonial) Williamsburg (one whole summer walking straight and not looking about for other things that certainly are interesting to others), they focused on the goal to the exclusion of all other distractions.

That's efficiency, which is counter-intuitive to creativity. Like oil and water, creative thinking will never thrive under the hands of an economist. (I remember Paul Samuelson's extremely readable Economics textbook when I was Freshman in the University of the Philippines' College of Agriculture in 1959; he was an exception.)

But more importantly … as Gopnik's article and research point out, getting the brain to think creatively, about new possibilities, employs and requires a different process than focusing on efficiency and goal-achievement.

Talk about efficiency and goals to basketball players, not to creative thinkers. Unless we become innocents once more, guileless, we will never enter the kingdom of creativity again.

Creative thinking is not something you can streamline or use time-management studies (with) to improve, as any writer or artist well knows. Ideas have their own unique ways and schedule for coming into the world. And sometimes, ironically enough, they arrive most efficiently when we stop focusing on efficiency.

Not so, Ms Wallace. "Serendipity," says Horace Walpole, "is the phenomenon of happy things happening when one is intent on doing something else." I learned to call on Serendipity anytime by diligently following the instructions associated with the Maltan Edward de Bono's lateral thinking, the German Rudolf Flesch's Readability Formula, American Ray Bradbury's word association; assiduously tracing British George Bernard Shaw's irreverent wit, and being inspired by Filipino Nick Joaquin's reportage in the Philippines Free Press and Asia-Philippines Leader. About 10 years ago, I tried Tony Buzan's mind mapping but I found already I was too creative for that device. Structure is anathema to me. In my creative thinking, there is only one rule: There is none. No rules, no borders, no limits.

Thank God, as a writer at 69, I'm as creative as I can ever be - in case of doubt, I invite you to visit just one place, the American Chronicle where including this I now have 264 long and disparate essays on diverse topics from Africa to Washington and the arts and sciences in-between, quite a few of them very scientific and at the same time very funny, like this one - but I haven't been able to streamline creative thinking myself, not for lack of trying. Notwithstanding, I'm happy to report that I can summon the muse anytime, and of course that's unbelievable, believe me. You can too, if you stop trying. Actually, I'm trying to teach you to do it yourself with this essay.

Lane Wallace continues:
I've come up with more breakthrough writing answers sitting in my back garden watching the hummingbirds … when I wasn't even consciously looking for an answer, than at any other place or time. Lord knows I wish it were otherwise. Life would be so much easier to manage and plan.

And less fun.

"I've come up with answers … when I wasn't looking for an answer." That's it! My thoughts jumped to, "That's the beauty of it all!" That's when I clearly remembered having read about The Uncertainty Principle yesterday. So I went back to Australia, and now I can give you the whole secret I have already partially revealed:

To enjoy your embrace of creative thinking, you must be happy to embrace The Uncertainty Principle.

And now I would like to tell you another insight I had this same morning:

To live at peace with the certainty of climate change, be at peace with The Uncertainty Principle.

No, not with Science exactly but with The Uncertainty Principle. Another way of putting that is this: To react to climate change, use The Even-If Principle.

What is The Uncertainty Principle anyway?

In 1927, Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, that which has been touted as the new physics of the atomic world, came up with The Uncertainty Principle in quantum theory, which stated that (as reported by the American Institute of Physics, aip.org):

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.

Such as that of an electron. It's all theory, of course, like evolution. Some scientists would like to believe they have debunked Heisenberg and made his famous Uncertainty Principle uncertain, but I'll stick with it, even if I don't know anything about quantum mechanics - who does?

I now would like to reword The Uncertainty Principle and make it apply to the Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin:

The more precisely the taxonomy is determined, the less precisely the dynamics is known in this instant, and vice versa.

What I'm saying is that Evolution rests on shaky grounds. Darwin equated similarities with the evolution of species.

And that's precisely where we stand in terms of climate change: on shaky grounds.

And that's precisely where creative thinking should stand at the very beginning: on shaky grounds.

And what did Charles Darwin do as he stood on shaky grounds? He did some creative thinking and came up with The Origin of the Species. That's the evolution of evolution.

What I'm saying is that if the Uncertainty Principle applies to evolution, it applies to climate change also. Simple. What's another word for Uncertainty? Why, Risk of course. You know how to manage risk and opportunities, don't you? Then you know how to manage climate change. Note: Risk management is not enough; there must be opportunities management.

David Biello writes in Scientific American ('Climate Change's Uncertainty Principle,' 25 October 2007, scientificamerican.com):

Some of these feedback processes are poorly understood - like how climate change affects clouds - and many are difficult to model, therefore the climate's propensity to amplify any small change makes predicting how much and how fast the climate will change inherently difficult. "Uncertainty and sensitivity are inextricably linked," (University of Washington atmospheric physicist Gerard) Roe says. "Some warming is a virtual certainty, but the amount of that warming is much less certain.'

In other words, this science is uncertain. So, with climate change, science is operating on The Uncertainty Principle. Even so, waiting for more scientific certainty before acting would be a big mistake, Roe says. "People are comfortable with the idea that stock markets, housing prices and the weather are uncertain, and they are used to making decisions on that basis." So why would they hesitate now?

And so we go back to Australia and turn to the CCP Adaptation Initiative Toolkit that counsels municipal councils to adopt the following set of guiding principles in dealing with climate change as much as they can as soon as they can; I have rewritten the text into the active voice (I'm proceeding from the certain principle that the active voice has more force, silly; I learned that also from the Reader's Digest, which I began to love reading 50 years ago):

(1) Balance immediate and long-term needs. In the long term, climate change will continue to impact the environment, and you have to plan on that, but you must also address immediate needs.

(2) Supplement interaction with action. Councils must follow-through on the actions they undertake without being sidetracked by the inaction of certain stakeholders. Climate change waits for no man, or woman, or council.

(3) Commit to act in the face of uncertainty. Everybody knows everyone tends not to act until "perfect information" is available. The reality is that, the Adaptation Toolkit says, "Perfect information on the impacts of climate change will never truly be available as climate change scenarios are being revised and improved regularly." Councils must make decisions even if there is uncertainty from those regular revisions.

And folks, that I submit is the perfect metaphor for creative thinking leading to creative writing! How so?

(1) Consider your needs. Your immediate need is to write a piece, and you must attend to that. Your long-term need is to master creative thinking and creative writing. But first things first.

(2) Interact. Interaction means you interview people or talk to them, and do interact with books and magazines and the Internet. (Caution: Don't read the newspapers; don't watch TV news broadcasts - they're too negative they will bring your creative energy level down.) And don't mind if you don't find anything important in those sources you thought were valuable. It pays to have a fast PC with a huge memory and a fast Internet connection at home. I'm using SmartBro (and Globe Broadband) right now - I have a desktop I love (this Intel Core i7) and an HP laptop I like to lug around town.

(3) Act, and act now! Now, don't wait until you think you have all the information you need, all the data you need. Don't hesitate. In the face of uncertainty, go ahead and write that draft, finish it by all means, even if My Certainty Principle says it will be lousy the first time. It happens to the best! It happens to me.

I'm a genius. Let me repeat that, with emphasis: I'm a genius. Ha! And so are you. Excuse me, I don't write for idiots.

There is a genius in creative thinking in you that is waiting to get out, dummy, if you just rub the magic lamp or say the magic word, 'Sesame!'

Nothing's certain, right? In creative thinking leading to creative writing, under My Uncertainty Principle, you begin with materials that which how they will fit into your final writing you don't know yet, or even if they will fit at all. In finalizing this one, I deleted 15 pages of my single-spaced notes, some of those lines I had handcrafted with delight myself. I remember Rudolf Flesch instructing me, "Murder your darlings." When your muse says 'Cut,' cut!

But before that, in fact, you need to add to the pile of materials you have researched until you can't take the chaos anymore, until you want to throw up, and that's when you know it's time to stop. This is not theoretical; I'm talking from experience. I've been doing that very consciously and very conscientiously since at least February 2006, when I began publishing in the American Chronicle, because by then I had learned to love to surf the Web, having an Internet connection at home for the first time. And? Serendipity! The very first essay I submitted and published was "Fuzzy logic & the avian flu. Or, Murder most fowl! A study in the language of science.'

In its own way, doesn't fuzzy logic make use of The Uncertainty Principle? That is some kind of creative thinking.

Learning from Lane Wallace, what is creative thinking but wandering in all sorts of connectional directions? Imagining all kinds of possibilities? Being drawn to objects and events that are new, unexpected or informative? Things that in fact will teach us the most?

To proceed from writing your first draft based on My Uncertainty Principle to the level of mastery of creative thinking, you will have to attend my workshop. And you will need mentoring. But I started you on the right path, didn't I, compliments of the Editor in Chief? May your tribe increase! Having traveled the Path of Uncertainty, go forth and multiply. If you are invited by others to teach you creative thinking / creative writing, and if you know they will want you to follow quite a number of clear rules, to be sure, please don't go. Instead, think of the American poet Robert Frost, my personal favorite, and come follow me:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one most troubled by,
And that has made all the difference!